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ERS has produced a growing body of work on how closely
Americans are following recommendations in the Dietary
Guidelines for Americans (Guidelines). The Federal
Government publishes the Guidelines to help Americans
adopt eating patterns that promote health and reduce the
risks of major chronic diseases.
The Guidelines:
- Uses up-to-date scientific and medical knowledge
about individual nutrients and food components to develop
eating recommendations for Americans age 2 and older.
- First published in 1980, updates recommendations
every 5 years to keep up with changes in physical
activity and food consumption trends over time as well
as with the latest scientific and medical information
on nutrition and health.
- Replaced its 1992
supporting guidance document, the Food Guide Pyramid,
with the MyPyramid Food Guidance System in
2005.
Do American diets meet the Guidelines'
recommendations? A 1999 report titled A
Dietary Assessment of the U.S. Food Supply: Comparing
Per Capita Food Consumption with Food Guide Pyramid Serving
Recommendations found that most American diets
do not meet Federal Food Guide Pyramid dietary recommendations.
On average, people consumed too many servings of added
fats and sugars and too few servings of fruits, vegetables,
dairy products, lean meats, and foods made from whole
grains—compared with the Food Guide Pyramid’s
serving recommendations appropriate to the age and gender
composition of the U.S. population. This report was the
first dietary assessment to use ERS's time-series Food
Availability data (also known as food supply or food disappearance
data) to compare average diets with Federal dietary recommendations
depicted in the Food Guide Pyramid. Both the ERS Loss-Adjusted
Food Availability data and the baseline Food
Availability data are available. A 2008
ERS report tells a similar story that Americans are
not making much progress in improving what they eat.
Implications for U.S. agriculture
A 2006 ERS report
provides one view of the potential implications for U.S.
agriculture if Americans fully changed their current consumption
patterns to meet select recommendations in the 2005
Guidelines. To meet the fruit, vegetable,
and whole-grain recommendations, ERS estimates that domestic
crop acreage would need to increase by 7.4 million harvested
acres, or 1.7 percent of total U.S. cropland
in 2002. Additionally, an estimated 111 billion more pounds
of milk and milk products would be needed each year for
Americans to meet the dairy consumption recommendations.
Some of this change would likely require an increase in
dairy cows, which would raise demand for feed grains and,
possibly, acreage devoted to dairy production.
Another study by ERS researchers examined how aggregate
food consumption and production levels would change if
Americans were to meet public health objectives set forth
in the Surgeon General’s “Healthy
People 2010” compared to USDA baseline projections.
To meet two objectives—increase the percentage of
the population with a healthy weight and decrease the
percentage of the population who are obese—without
changing levels of physical activity would require a 6-percent
reduction in aggregate food consumption. This, in turn,
would lead to a drop in production of agricultural commodities
and reduce net returns to producers by $3.5 billion. However,
if population weight objectives are met by also increasing
physical activity, these same goals could be achieved
at much less cost ($1.3 billion). Changes in agricultural
activities would vary across regions, with the largest
potential changes in producer net returns in the Corn
Belt and the Lake States. (See: Johansson, Robert, Lisa
Mancino, and Joe Cooper, "The Big Picture: Production
Impacts of Reduced Obesity," Agribusiness,
22(5):1-13, 2006.)
 Interactions
among different agricultural commodity markets may moderate
the size of any adjustments estimated by ERS. Consumers
could substitute some products for others, depending on
prices. Farmers, who base planting decisions on expected
prices, could alternate among crops, with limitations,
on the same piece of land. Producers and processors could
alter the supply of final foods, depending on relative
prices, consumer demand, and changing technologies.
Because of the size and complexity of the U.S. food system,
an almost infinite combination of foods, production methods,
end uses, and trade adjustments could work together to move
diets toward the Federal dietary recommendations. Food consumption
is just one of several components of demand for agricultural
products, along with animal feed, exports, and nonfood or
industrial uses. Shifts in food demand due to dietary change
would likely result in offsetting shifts in production,
trade, and nonfood uses, which would tend to moderate the
effects on food prices and farm income in the long run.
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